BATON ROUGE – A Louisiana Senate employee has been suspended and an investigation launched after an email was sent to state workers that depicts President Obama as a white person and is labeled a “racism test”.

Senate researcher Tammy Crain-Waldrop was suspended without pay after she sent the email to hundreds of government workers through the state’s internal system. She later sent a second email saying the first message had been sent by mistake to state employees.

News 2 obtained a copy of the email, which has a photo of Obama with white skin, blue eyes and a different haircut. Above the email is the message “THIS IS A RACISM TEST”, and below it another message that reads “Do you like him any better now? No? Me neither…. Then you’re not a racist.”

Several African-American lawmakers called the email offensive, and a notice was put out shortly afterward reminding state workers about the proper use of the email system.

Today, officials said they expected a determination to be made about Crain-Waldrop by the end of next week.